Public legal education and inmates' perceptions of the legitimacy of official punishment in China

Abstract

Although it is widely recognized that an offender's perceptions of the legitimacy of legal sanctions are directly related to his or her subsequent behavioural adjustment, few studies examine the factors that affect such perceptions. The present study addresses this issue by examining a unique social policy - public legal education - that is part of the Chinese system of social control. We describe the rationale, content and implementation of this policy. We speculate that public legal education may serve a positive function in legitimizing the Chinese criminal justice system and that offenders' perception of sanction fairness may be an indicator of this function. Our specific hypothesis is that the availability of public legal education in an offender's neighbourhood is positively related to his or her perception of sanction fairness. Using data from the city of Tianjin, we assess this hypothesis in a multivariate analysis. The data support our hypothesis. In addition, we also find that severity of punishment is negatively related to such perceptions, consistent with distinct features of Chinese criminal justice practice.